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This is the second segment on The Intelligence Report Fox Business Network with host Trish Regan. We discussed the Democrats attempts to sway the Electoral College and how they lost the election. Here are some snippets.

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The world is about to dramatically change, disrupting massive sets of industries, because science fiction is about to become real. Are you ready?

The Motorola flip phone and the Apple iPad are basically devices dreamt of and put on screen in Star Trek.

I’ve been talking about three dimensional (3D) printers for a couple of years and how they are going to dramatically alter manufacturing, shipping, and pollution as you won’t need to buy an item manufactured inexpensively in China, shipped across the Pacific Ocean in giant polluting freighters, transported to a brick and mortar facility or retailer, and then your house. Soon, you’ll see a new toy for your child, or doorknob for your front door, pay for the plan, and then print it at home. This will change our economy in massive ways.

Virtual Reality (VR) has been discussed for a very long time. It has always been clunky, causing some people dizziness and sickness, and for others a difficulty balancing after taking off the headsets. Further, little of what I’ve seen from VR has been beyond games, pornography, and travel immersion, all of which might have entertainment or minimal educational value.

Now, Google has released Tilt Brush. This appears to be an amazingly disruptive, creative technology. In the video below, you can see people painting and creating in a virtual 3D space with materials that simply are not available in our real world. Stunning!

Here is where I think it goes, though. This tool becomes the basis for adding tremendous value or even revolutionizing civil engineering, architecture, and other industries that now rely on Computer Aided Design (CAD) technology. A designer could build a building in that Tilt Brush space, and if properly programmed, can test their ideas out for seismic, strength, and other engineering issues before even presenting the concept to another person.

Finally, I can see how the home 3D printer gets a new source of ideas for printing. Any idea I might have for a residential or commercial purpose I could create out of materials available for the printer, design the idea in the Tilt Brush VR space, and then print the final item out on my 3D printer.

Along with confirming a widely predicted decline in iPhones sales during the first three months of the year, Apple on Tuesday reported its first drop in quarterly revenue on an annual basis since 2003. But the whole point of quarterly earnings is to glean information we didn’t already know.
So here are a few pieces of new information that are worth pondering as investors try to decide whether the most valuable U.S. public company is headed for a torturous decline or about to emerge triumphant again.
CEO Tim Cook didn’t sound worried on the company’s call with analysts. “The future of Apple is very bright,” he said while alluding to exciting but unspecified new products.

In recent years, most of Apple’s sales growth has come from China, but that engine too has greatly slowed. Apple said its China sales shrunk by more than a quarter to $12.5 billion. The rate of growth had already slipped to 14% last quarter’s from jumps of 99%, 112%, and 71% in the three prior quarter. Further, the challenges are increasing after China forced Apple to shut downits iBooks store and iTunes movie service last week after just six months in operation, reducing the appeal of the iOS ecosystem there.

Tune in to The Ethan Bearman Show on KGO 810 in San Francisco noon to 2pm Pacific Time (1-3pm Mountain Time) each weekday – www.kgoradio.com

I discuss the Keystone XL pipeline veto by President Obama, relay facts regarding the environmental argument, how MIT Professor of Energy Economics Chris Knittel says it will actually reduce carbon emissions, rail versus pipeline safety according to the Washington Post, economic impact of refining in the United States since we don’t allow export of crude oil, and the money behind this fight in the form of rail companies (Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad) versus pipeline companies.

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In this video, Ethan discusses the latest unemployment report from the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), dated December 5, 2014.

The headlines in media and pundits all over were touting the huge success of this report with a number of 321,000 new jobs. While getting Americans working in full-time jobs is something worth celebrating, the truth is different from the 321,000 number.

In reality the numbers look like this: 119,000 new people entered the labor pool, 115,000 people lost their jobs, the number of full-time jobs decreased by 150,000, and part-time jobs increased by 77,000. Not as good as the headlines is it?

The U-3 official unemployment rate stayed steady at 5.8%. 321,000 new jobs but unemployment stayed the same? That’s because the net new jobs was only 4,000.

That official unemployment number never tells the true story anyway. They don’t want to scare the masses and speak the truth. You CAN handle the truth. The truth is the U-6 unemployment number. The U-6 unemployment rate is 11.4% or 1 in 9 Americans.

According to the BLS, U-6 is total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.

What that means is that 1 in 9 Americans either can’t find a job for the past 27 weeks (the number in U-3), can’t find a full-time job only part-time, or have fallen out of the stats because they have been looking longer than 27 weeks.

Not quite the rosy picture now, is it? What are the politicians doing to reduce red-tape, streamline bureaucracy, allow innovation to flourish, and simplify the tax code thus vaulting the United States to the top of business competitiveness?

Later in the video, Ethan covers some of the fallacies of the massive lithium-ion battery because of the sources of lithium.

President Obama has directed the EPA to issue new rules to the 600 coal burning power plants in the United States. This fiat move under the Clean Air Act is intended to reduce carbon emissions 30% and allow the U.S. to meet United Nations negotiated carbon emissions from 2009.

Needless to say, coal states have cried foul and the Chamber of Commerce says this will negatively impact our economy to the tune of $50 billion per year.

Keep in mind that the U.S. has already reduced carbon emissions from the 2005 benchmark of 6 billion metric tons of CO2 to 5.29 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2012 (source: USDOE), mostly through the switch to cheap natural gas.

I want clean air and clean water for me and my children as much as anyone.

Coal is a dirty fuel source. It creates pollution during mining, pollution during transport, pollution during the energy production, and pollution in the waste storage.

Coal is the number one source of toxic mercury pollution. Mercury is an acute neurotoxin that builds up in the environment and builds up in your body over time. Coal is also a major source of sulfur dioxide pollution.

But is this the right move? Are we focusing on the right issues? Is carbon a greater threat to my children’s health or is mercury and sulfur?

Toxic Pollution

I care more about the immediate effects of toxic pollution like mercury and sulfur, more than the debatable topic of carbon pollution.

Shockingly, nearly 30% of coal power plants have no controls for toxic air pollution which we can quickly fix in a way that is economically sound. The coal power plant pollution chain can readily be cleaned up.

For example, Constellation Energy has a very large, 1,300 megawatt coal power plant just outside Baltimore called the Brandon Shores plant. They quickly built a scrubber to meet new Maryland rules, breaking ground in June 2007 and completing the work in September, 2009. There were up to 1,385 construction workers building this upgrade, at a cost $875 million, and the power plant remains profitable.

The scrubber – a large chemical plant next to the plant – cuts 95 percent of the sulfur dioxide and 90 percent of the mercury.

So why did the President leave out cleaning up toxic pollution? Why not talk about carbon capture and storage (CCS) or geothermal power?

Sadly, neither is likely to get the attention they deserve in this heated debate.

There are numerous CCS projects in the works, but it has been a secondary approach to carbon emissions. A properly functioning CCS power plant produces fewer carbon emissions than even a natural gas plant. Should this technology mature, retrofits to existing coal plants would become viable.

Geothermal Energy

The holy grail of reducing any energy production pollution that has been in use, and widely ignored, for over 50 years is geothermal energy.

Geothermal, simply put, uses the heat in the earth a couple of kilometers down (shallower than some oil wells) to heat water, which makes steam, which turns turbines, producing electricity. Take a look HERE for a video and description.

Any environmentalist who actually cares about what they claim, should be pushing geothermal far before wind or solar. Made in the USA, reliable (even more than a coal plant), doesn’t require any exotic materials or technology, and produces little to no pollution, geothermal is really the greatest answer to our energy needs.

Why isn’t the President talking about geothermal? Money. Too many of his donors have vested interests in the false promise of solar and wind technologies (which are perfectly fine for off-grid uses). There simply isn’t enough money to be made by his donors producing reliable, clean geothermal power.

If this administration or those in the environmental movement really want to reduce emissions of any pollutants, they need to look at how the economy will function in a manner that supports many aspects of our country and actually admit what is the truth in their goals.